


1 4 5 6

by Vixx2pointOh



Series: A Picture Tells [3]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: 15th Century, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Historical, Emotional Sex, Emotions, F/M, Naughty, Secret Relationship, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-22
Updated: 2019-09-22
Packaged: 2020-10-25 22:42:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20731901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vixx2pointOh/pseuds/Vixx2pointOh
Summary: Tarnished and shamed by a secret love, and shadowed by the deepest sadness at it's loss, The Château convent would be to Felicity a prison of loneliness and regret.Punished to forever see the face of her dead lover in every traveller, but it's always just a dream...isn't it?





	1 4 5 6

**Author's Note:**

> Week 3 • the Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers (look it up, but note I haven't been historically accurate, it wasn't a convent) •

**1 4 5 6 | F r a n c e **

The clatter of hooves on the cobbled road drew Felicity's attention only momentarily, as they signified her long journey was almost at an end. But, she found no pleasure in that, and in fact she found little pleasure in most things since him. Where she once found joy in the intricate petals of a flower or the mass expanse of a wonderfully starry night; such ardent joy seemed now to only compound the heavy weight twisted like barbs though her heart.

A solitary tear slipped from the corner of her eye and she left it alone to burn down her cheek while she bit back many more that lay beneath the surface, threatening. Her heart was irrevocably broken and to feel the scolding ache which that singular tear carried with it down her face was all that kept Felicity alive inside the shell she possessed.

“We will be arriving at Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers shortly,” her companion, an older woman with sharp features and an even sharper voice, commented with little comfort or pleasantry in her plummy voice.

Felicity nodded as her gloved hands wrung together. The name was a beautiful one, but Felicity was under no illusion that this journey would end in beauty. The Château would be to Felicity a prison of loneliness and regret; sent away from her home as penance for a sin most unbecoming.

With the watchful disdain of her companion scolding her, Felicity glanced out the window just as the mote of oily water came into sight; _perhaps she might drown herself in the same if this pain continues to haunt her._ It was a fleeting thought that she banished before it took root in her mind, but it was not the first time such a one had crept into her turbulent thoughts.

“God forgive you,” her companion spoke with bitterness leaching off her tongue as her eyes sliced through Felicity from across the carriage.

Felicity cared very little for forgiveness from the deity and so she wilfully ignored the older woman's comments. When the carriage stopped Felicity stepped out of the same, shrouded in black garb and wearing a silent disposition.

A rotund Abbess met them in the middle of the courtyard and Felicity could feel many other eyes around the edges as she trickled her fingers down the brittle edges of her tightly pulled bodice.

_Run away with me_

Felicity still remembered the way he had spoken the words moments after they had been together, their bodies still entwined; naked and spent. He'd sworn himself to her, offering all he had and willing to leave so much behind.

_“You would leave? Your family, your cloak, your oath, you would leave it all?”_ She had uttered while her eyes begged for him not to toy with her heart.

He had promised and she had sworn herself to him the same way.

They would leave; him his lofty position and the expectations that came with it, and Felicity her wealthy life and station.

The very next afternoon they had wed in secret under the branches of a large oak tree with only a one witness each. She brushed a fingertip across her cheek as she recounted the smile she couldn’t disguise in the days and weeks that followed. He was not permitted to marry and she had been betrothed to another in a political marriage, but in the weeks that followed they stole nights away together and shared looks across the opulent marble floor, despite the careful eyes that watched.

In hushed words spoken through walls in darkened spaces, he’d told her of the many places they would go and she would beguile him with stories of what their life might one day resemble; _simple but utterly perfect._

As the weeks drew to a month and the night they were to escape together inched closer, a secret was spilled and all the beauty of those promises was destroyed. Torn from his arms and banished to her chambers, she watched him from the window as he swore that he would return as soon as he could and all would be well.

She had waited through the looks of disgust and the shame heaped upon her, knowing that on his return they would be reunited and his love would be greater than any disdain she’d encountered.

But, two months, nearly to the day, since she had last seen her love, she received word that he had died on the journey.

And so, she was sent a great distance away from her home to live out her days, ashamed and tarnished, in the convent at Château de la Mothe-Chandeniers.

**•|•**

  
She was shown to her room with little fanfare and many hushed whispers in the halls she walked through. The room was on the third floor, in the front corner of the Château, no doubt a far loftier position than many of the others who stepped through the convent’s gates. There were no pleasantries exchanged and no farewell between her and her companion, and the door to her room closed with a thud almost as soon as she’d entered it.

Felicity didn’t mind the solitude though, and as her eyes roved across the small but comfortable room, she welcomed the silence to be alone with her thoughts.

It was agreeable in cleanliness, albeit simple, and there was little doubt that her large dowry and her parents’ good name had afforded her a level of comfort that would ordinarily be frowned upon in such a place. Perhaps the vow of poverty could be adjusted according to wealth.

Felicity stood at the window and glanced down across the calm waters of the mote below it. They were eerily still and blackishly deep, and she absently wondered both its depth and its temperature as the door creaked open and the same Abbess appeared in her doorway.

She prattled off duties and chores; though Felicity would be given a week’s respite from both, and of expectations and penance for her past. As the last words left off the older nun’s lips, Felicity found herself smiling just a fraction at the seam of her lips imagining just how horrified she must have been to learn of Felicity’s _misdeeds_.

As she finished, Felicity thanked her in the woman’s mother tongue, and for a moment she appeared gracious for the effort. But soon, the thin smile pulled taut into a pursed frown before she once again closed the door with a heavy crash and left Felicity alone in the room.

Felicity watched from the same window as the carriage that had bought her the last leg of the journey departed with her bitter companion settled into the back of it, no doubt glad to be rid of the heathen. Looking across to her door, Felicity wondered whether it had been locked to keep her in the room, lest she tarnish the good morals of those who went there willingly or at their family’s gentle request. But she didn't try, because that was an answer that would serve her no purpose in that moment.

Whether the door was locked or not, Felicity was a prisoner.

Once again alone, Felicity wandered around the room after pulling one hand free from her suffocating glove. Nothing felt as soft as it once had to her and she knew that she had rubbed the pads of her fingers raw with distress every day she had been parted from him.

The bed was single and set in the middle of the small room. Its linen was new or starched to appear so. It was simple and undyed and there was no fringe or decoration to it. The floors of the room were bare and the walls just as so.

A wash basin set on an oak table was the only ornate thing in the room and a chamber pot sat poignantly in the corner. Her trunk was placed at the foot of her bed and the simple closet nearby was left open for her to fill.

**•|•**

Silently, with only her small whispered breaths for company, Felicity unpacked all that was given her. Many of her clothes were dyed dark and without trimmings of lace or ribbon, as many of the clothes from her former life had been.

Once that task was complete, Felicity sunk into the simple wooden stool at the vanity and carefully removed the black bonnet that had held her hair back in a tight and harsh bun. She let her hair spill down her back in a tumble of golden curls before she met her forlorn reflection.

Her blue eyes were pale, her skin sunken and drawn and her body ached from scars both seen and unseen. Her father's hand had been tortuously hard and her punishment had been swift. Despite the long and arduous journey to France, her pain still ached.

Felicity knew with time they would fade, but the pain she felt inside would live with her until death's embrace came for her. She prayed for that to be soon and well before her father happened upon some man who might be willing to have his ruined daughter as a trophy to be had and a conduit for his most insatiable desires.

She would rather throw herself from the top of the castle before she gave her body to another man. Even in death, it was his and she would love or embrace no other.

**•|•**

  
Night was her only respite and in her dreams Felicity so often felt his presence surrounding her. She held onto fragments of his memory; the touch of his hand softly on her breasts, the liquid warmth of his gentle kisses down her belly, the smoothness of her name from his full, wet lips, and the taste of her saltiness on his tongue, to name only a few.

She begged the moon to come and she cursed the sun for rising for 1 year and 47 days in total. For 40 of those nights, early on in her time at the Château, her dreams gave relief from the pain of the hatch of cane whips across her back. A must, she was told, to prostrate her sins, given by the hand of an older woman who muttered in French with each lashing.

For the other nights he simply visited her giving her dreams that could not be taken from her.

She saw his face on every traveller and merchant that stumbled upon or ventured to the convent, but after her excitement and mistake caused her to suffer for her "sinful nature" Felicity did well to hide the face she saw, never admitting the same with even the slightest hint of a smile.

None were ever him of course and she knew this, but still she saw him and for a brief moment she imagined being free of the shackles of shame and garb of black, safely in his arms.

Most in the convent were forbidden from talking to her and much of Felicity's time was spent in her room whittling away her youth.

Over a year spent within the same four walls had done their damage and Felicity's smile was all but gone. It was at that time she was blamed for the corruption of a young girl who had fled the convent with the son of a merchant who traded produce with them, and perhaps she had helped the young lovers abscond, a fact she was most certainly not apologetic for.

Her punishment had been severe and even a few days later lying down brought her much pain, however she still did, just to see his face even though time had slowly faded it.

**•|•**

Due to unrepentance, Felicity had been confined to her room one fateful evening, and as the sun was casting its rays of burnt orange and vibrant pink across the sky, the bell outside the gates was rung most hurriedly.

It was a day of great prayer and, from her window, she whispered down to the travellers that no one would see to their entry. From above them she could see little but they were soldiers, the pair, and one appeared to be injured.

Without thinking Felicity headed to her door but found it locked, bolted from the outside, and there was nothing she could do about it.

The bell rung more fervently and the one man pounded on the door, yelling at the top of his lungs in both French and English that his friend was hurt, calling upon them to let them in.

The door opened to them and while Felicity could not see by whom, she imagined it must have been the visiting Chaplin, or at the very least the sour-faced Abbess. She imagined there would be quite a commotion in the courtyard, as they readied for supper.

She had almost suspected they might have forgotten about her as she waited patiently for her one jaunt out of her confines; to the dinning room and back, always to sit alone and to speak with no one. But, her freedom (should she brazenly call it that) came some moments later with a flustered nun.

Without an exchange of words, Felicity followed the woman’s shuffled steps. As she had expected there was much activity as the two men requested lodging for the night. The injured one seemed much less graver that had appeared and the other spoke in flustered and broken French. The injured man glanced up at Felicity as she walked the hallway balcony above.

He was stooped over, but he still appeared to her tall and broad across the shoulders. He seemed to watch every step she took. Much of his face was shrouded in the shadows of first evening, but of course, like the others who came before him, his chiselled and bristled jaw became the jaw of her lover; the same definition but a closer shave. His eyes behind a shadowy brow became his too, but with azure eyes that smiled at her like brilliant sapphires.

Unable to lose herself a moment longer in such a fanciful dream, Felicity bowed her head and continued her way.

**•|•**

After supper there was no sign of the men and a hush of required silence had fallen over the entire convent. Felicity didn’t know whether they had been allowed to stay and the wounded man had had his injuries tended to, and she walked back to her room with a companion a few steps behind wondering the same.

Once inside her room she heard the familiar sound of the bolt on the sliding lock, but the same brought her comfort now; she was alone in her room where nothing could steal the intimate thoughts she had. The sun had well since set and the evening sky was hauntingly empty of stars as they were hidden behinds puffs of grey clouds.

_Perhaps it would rain tonight_, she wondered with a smile lifting her lips. The sound of the same always reminded her of one of the afternoons they shared together, caught in a storm and forced into a stable for shelter. She had been wet through but his kiss had warmed her the core.

Her fingers moved slowly down her scooped neckline, delicately tracing the scalloped edge of her white kirtle beneath as she recounted the way he’d tenderly touched her. Her deep-scarlet woollen dress felt rough against her fragile touch, but silks and fur were forbidden even for her.

The dress itself was simple but followed the willowy lines of her body with the skirt pooling at the back around the floor. It was hardly one meant for labour as the others wore, but they feared her influence and Felicity was even forbidden to partake in chores or labour that might see her step outside the convent walls.

Unlike her ornate costumes and fine dresses at home, this one laced modestly in the front with knotted cord. Swaying with a song her lover so often hummed, she moved about the room; imagining them dancing together without a care in the world, as she began to loosen the ties at the front.

Wrapped up in her fanciful dreams, Felicity didn’t hear the slow drag of her door unlocking or the powdery creek as it opened, she did however hear it close.

She turned around, startled, with the front of her dress opened to reveal a puff of her kirtle and a crimson blush from her throat spreading down beneath it. It was the wounded man and he was staring right at her. Her arms folded to cover the silhouette of her pert breasts beneath the thin cotton cloth, but before she could open her mouth to speak, his lips were on hers.

Felicity couldn’t pull away as her feet stayed anchored to the floor, but when she whimpered out a request for him to stop, it was him who severed the kiss.  
“Please sir, I am not the comfort you seek,” she whispered as her shaking fingers touched her wet lip. She kept her voice low, knowing that if he was discovered in her room, even though she had not offered him entry, she would be punished for such a thing. She lowered her eyes to the floor and her chin to her chest.

“Felicity?”  
The way he said her name was soft and breathy, and painfully familiar.  
“I do not know how it is that you have come to know my name, but I ask of you to please take your leave good sir and I will tell this matter to no one,” she pleaded as a tear sprung from her eye. She heard her lover in his voice and the pain of it felt like a knife to her heart.

His finger gently caressed her chin as he lifted her head so that their eyes might meet. “Look at me Felicity,” he breathed and her lips tremored.  
Behind the thickened beard lay the most familiar lips, tucked into a buckled smile at one end, and below a shadowed brow sat the bluest eyes, like a beautiful summer’s sky.

But he was a deception. He had to be.  
“You know me,” he breathed as he took her hands and guided them to his face. “Please, tell me that you know me.”  
The tips of her fingers trickled down his cheek as a quivering breath floated from her lips.  
“Oliver?”  
For the first time in over a year she spoke his name aloud to another. It was frail and barely heard, but a breathy sigh of relief lightened his expression.

He dropped to his knees and pressed his cheek to the front of her hips. “Please forgive me my love that it has taken me so long to find you,” he sobbed into her woollen dress.  
Her body swayed silently as tears streamed down her pale cheeks.  
“I know that this is a dream,” she spoke softly as her fingers stroked through his hair, “but it is one that I hope I never wake from.”

Oliver stood to his feet and clasped her face between his hands. “My love, this is no dream,” he assured her before he leaned in and gently kissed her shivering lips. Her eyes closed as her tongue traced the edges of his lip; finding them just as she remembered them.  
“My Oliver is dead,” she said quietly against his lips, her eyes still delicately closed with a spill of dark lashes against her alabaster complexion.

“I live and breathe, here with you Felicity.”  
“But I received word of it,” she explained as she brushed her fingers across his temple. “Perhaps my mind has finally addled and given me the most amazing gift.”  
“My journey took long and I was kept confined for some time, but I returned to you as soon as I could only to find you were gone and no one would tell me where.”

“I searched relentlessly for you, I swear to you on my very life that I never stopped looking for you,” he promised with begging eyes.  
“How did you find me?” Felicity asked, curiosity pinning her brows closer.  
“Fate passed my way by a maiden who spoke of a most beautiful woman with a kind soul who was imprisoned in these walls and shrouded in silence and black cloth.” He brushed her hair back from her face and peppered her lips with kisses. “In my heart I knew it was you.”

“Kiss me once more, like you used to, so that I may know I am not dreaming,” she pleaded and Oliver obliged when his lips fell upon hers in a warm and devout kiss.  
Her eyes stayed closed as he pulled slowly away, leaving her parted lips kissing the warm breath he left behind. It was then Felicity remembered the man had been injured and her fingers sought out the wound on his arm.

“You were hurt,” she panicked as she found the bandage wrapped around his arm, beneath his linen tunic.  
“Just a scratch made to appear worse so that they would let us it,” he told her, his smile lifting higher to one side. “I was not sure you would see me, or if they would hide you away should I announced myself.”

Oliver took her hand and held it tightly between his. “I ask that you leave with me and I will run you from this place and every soul who put you here,” he promised. “Leave with me now,” he added as he led her towards the door.

But she stopped just shy of it.  
“I’m afraid that the moment I walk through that door I will wake up from this most wonderful and vivid dream,” she fretted before a smile stole her lips. “Be with me in this moment so that if this is only a dream, it shall be the most perfect of dreams.”  
She kissed him fierce and decidedly as her arms coiled over his shoulders. “Have me like I have dreamed all these nights before,” she begged as she lifted her body tightly against his chest.  
“This is no dream my angel,” he assured her with a pleasant whisper near her ear before he collected the tears from her cheeks with a kiss.

He lifted her at her svelte waist and she begged he hold her tight enough to leave bruises so she would know the reality of that moment. He captured her quivering lips once again and drove his tongue between their seam while her shaking fingers traced the known lines of his face.

  
Oliver carried her across the room to her vanity where a clean wash cloth sat folded. She pushed it aside sending the same billowing to the wooden floor; though it fell without noise.

Breathless, their mouths pulled apart but their hands remained tangled in the other's hair and face. Her whole body ached for him, and the throb emanating from her belly had her breathing ragged and fitful.

Felicity pulled her skirt up to her thighs and his hands brushed heavy strokes up the inside of her legs. As his thumbs climbed closer, Oliver could feel the heat pulsing from her sex, mimicking her tempered breath and her fiery eyes.

She tore at his dark trousers and soon they draped loose around his knees with only the thin tails of his tunic covering his erect cock. Her nimble fingers made light work of the laced tunic he wore, pulling it roughly off his head before her fingertips traced the plains and grooves of his smooth and broad chest, each line setting off a beautiful spark in her core.

He opened the front of her dress before his broad fingers stroked the outline of her breasts beneath her thin kirtle. Each brush across her hardened nipples made Felicity moan as her teeth bit down on her swollen lip. Taking pause, Oliver’s fingers gently smoothed over the cusps of her shoulders, pushing the edges of her kirtle down too and exposing the snowy slopes of her breasts.

He leaned in and his warm breath misted her chest, before he gently kissed the tip of her dusky nipple while the warm glow of orange from her lit lamps nearby bathed her in warm shadows and highlights. Her softly muted mewls caressed his ears as the wispy saltiness of her skin danced on his palate.

Her supple breast collapsed around his lips while his tongue lashed across the tip of her nipple and his chin kneaded into her aching flesh.

Felicity gripped her petite hand around the base of his cock, her fingertips barely meeting around the taut rod. As she moved her hand slowly around his shaft, she could feel the vein on the underside throbbing with desire.

When his teeth lightly nipped the edge of her coiled nipple, sending a rush of pleasure through Felicity’s body, she fisted his cock with a wonderfully strangled grip.

She inched forward on the vanity and brushed the damp head of his cock against her velvety thighs. Her silent keens begged him closer, as did her eyes, before she tipped her hips and sliced him slowly between her folds and around her thrumming entrance. She shuddered pleasurably at the sensation as the feeling of it trickled down every nerve of her body.

He dropped her breast from his mouth with a salacious pop before he caught it in his hand and gently massaged under the crescent. He kissed, agonizingly slow, across her chest to her other aching breast, before capturing the same in his hungry mouth.

He suckled her breast as she coated his tip in her arousal.  
“If this is a dream then let me die in it,” she whispered as she pressed his cock against her entrance.  
Letting her breast go, Oliver’s eyes met with hers while she dug the heel of her hand into the smooth wood beneath her. She pecked a chaste kiss against his lips as her legs spread wider around his hips.

She leaned close and sucked the lobe of his ear between her pillowed lips. “Love me hard my Oliver, let me feel it in every part of my body and know that I have kept myself for you.”  
As the last raspy word left off Felicity’s lips, Oliver thrust forward, slamming his cock deep inside her tight wetness, while he captured the pleasured scream from her lips.

The feet of the table grazed the floor as Oliver’s relentless thrusts shook them both. Her tongue pierced through the seam of his lips and twisted around his tongue, each of them swallowing the decadent moans of the other, lest they give themselves away.

Her walls clenched around him as her heels bruised the backs of his thighs. Every inch of them was veiled in a fine sweat as the room filled with the heady scent of insatiable pleasure.

Felicity came with his name on her quivering lips and her warmth blanketed his shaft and wet the tops of her thighs as Oliver continued to ruck her with deep, punishing thrusts, just as she had asked.

Her head fell back and the threads of her neck were burned with a beautiful scarlet blush that glistened in the small light. He kissed her there, feeling the frantic beat of her pulse as he reached his climax.

Just before he fell over the edge, Oliver pulled out and Felicity caught his cock with her nimble hands. She pumped him quickly, his cock slippery with her spend, until he spilled himself across her dress that sat bunched up around her waist.

His head fell against her chest, listening to her heartbeat, their bodies wet and warm. Trailing her fingers through his hair, Felicity held him there and breathed in the mixed scents that dappled the air.

_This wasn’t a dream._

**|• end •|**

**AUTHOR'S NOTE **

**So, did this seem oddly familiar? Yes? It should have... this is set in the same universe as ["Oliver the Cardinal"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16334099) so welcome back to Priest!Oliver (not sorry)**

** **

Regarding this series 

**[Twitter announcement ](https://twitter.com/Someonesaidcake/status/1178935799070375936?s=19) || [Tumblr announcement](https://someonesaidcake.tumblr.com/post/188060623630/hi-guys-firstly-i-feel-like-im-about-to-let-a)**


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